Test 2 - Section 4

SECTION 4

You are going to hear a talk given by a student to a tutor and a group of fellow students in a seminar. First you have some time to read questions 31 to 34. Now as you listen to the beginning of the talk answer questions 31-34.

TUTOR: Right. Are we all here? OK. As you know, today Vivien is going to do a presentation on the hat-making project she did with her class during her last teaching practice. So, over to you, Vivien.

VIVIEN: Thanks. Um… Mr Yardley has asked me to describe to you the project I did as a student teacher at a secondary school in London. I was at this school for six weeks and I taught a variety of subjects to a class of fourteen-year-old pupils. The project I chose to do was a hat-making project and I think this project could easily be adapted to suit any age. So, to explain the project…

After we’d done the research, we went back to the classroom to make two basic hat shapes using rolls of old wallpaper. We each made, first of all, a conical hat by…er … if I show you now… cutting out a circle and then making one cut up to the centre and then …er … overlapping the cut like this this… a conical hat that sits on your head. The other hat we made was a little more complicated…er … first of all we cut out a circle again… like this… then you need a long piece with flaps on it-I’ve already made that bit which I have here - you bend the flaps over and stick them… with glue or prittstick… to the underside of the circle … like this. Again, I’ve prepared this so that I don’t get glue everywhere. The pupils do, of course, so you need plenty of covers for the table. And there you have a pillbox hat as in pill and box. Now variations and combinations of these two hat shapes formed the basis of the pupils’ final designs.

Now you have some time to look at questions 35 to 40. Now listen and answer questions 35 to 40.

The next stage of the project was the design phase and this involved, first of all, using their pages of research to draw a design of their hat on paper. That’s the easy part. They then had to translate their two-dimensional design into a form to fit their head. I encouraged them to make a small-scale, three-dimensional hat first so that they could experiment with how to achieve the form they required and I imposed certain constraints on them to keep things simple. For example, they had to use paper not card. Paper is more pliable and easier to handle. They also had to limit their colours to white, grey or brown shades of paper which reflected the colours of the buildings they were using as a model for their hats and they had to make sure their glue didn’t show!

Well, it was very enjoyable and just to give you an idea of what they produced. I’ve brought along three hats to show you. This one here is based on a circular stairway in an old building in London. It uses three pillbox hats one on top of the other. This was designed by Theresa. Here’s another one that has a simple strip going round the base of the hat but has then gone on to add strips of paper that come out from the base and that meet at the top of the hat - rather like a crown-making a fairly tall hat. This was made by Muriel. And lastly there’s a combination of the pillbox or single strip around the base and then the conical hat shape on top to form a castle turret. This was made by Fabrice, and there are many more that I could have brought.

TUTOR: Thank you, Vivien. That was most interesting. Now what we can learn from this is that …

That is the end of section four. You will now have half a minute to check your answers. That is the end of the listening test. In the IELTS test, you would now have ten minutes to transfer your answers to the listening answer sheet.